A few weeks ago Jan Borchers, professor of computer science and head of the Media Computing Group at RWTH Aachen, gave an interesting talk at the TEDx conference in Hasselt. In his talk he encapsulates the nine things everybody should know about basic usability:
- Simplicity: designing for user, task, and context
- Gestalt laws: importance of distance, grouping, similarity, and experience
- Visibility and feedback
- Natural mappings
- The principle of least surprise
- Dialog, not monolog
- Error tolerance
- Vertical design: instead of one (horizontal) layer
- Aesthetics
These principles are of course (maybe before anything else) also applicable when designing mobile (learning) apps. Especially the principles of simplicity, gestalt laws, and dialog should get more attention in this context. The entire talk can be watched on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=evoa-ULOb0Y
